The fear of strangers: why do some people reject immigration?

Exaggerated anxiety followed by gradual accommodation is one of the most consistent features of Western immigration history – with first Catholics, then Jews and now Muslims feared. In thinking about issues of cultural difference and social cohesion, we need a path between alarmism and complacency.

This article is part of an upcoming collection on community and local policy by the Policy Hub for the Huth Initiative for a New Political Economy.

In 1751, Benjamin Franklin, champion of Enlightenment reason, wrote about the immigration of Germans into Pennsylvania:

‘Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs?’

Franklin was wrong. The Germans assimilated. Pennsylvania survived. Yet over two and a half centuries later, you have probably heard the same argument with the same level of alarm – though about a different group of people, perhaps immigrants in general or Muslims in particular.

The nature of the accusation against the newcomers is always much the same: that they are unable or unwilling to adopt the values that sustain the society they are joining; and that, as a result, the society will become more divided and the growing political power of the new groups may lead to changes that some think undesirable.

The most famous articulation of this fear in British political history was Enoch Powell's 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech. The Conservative shadow cabinet minister spoke about how the existing population ‘found themselves made strangers in their own country’ because of immigration. In a 2025 survey, 44% of Britons said that they sometimes feel like they are strangers to those around them.

Figure 1. 'I feel like a stranger to those around me'

Note: Share of respondents by demographic group when asked how closely they relate to the phrase 'I feel like a stranger to those around me', England and Wales, 2025
Source: More in Common (2025)

Perhaps a wariness about unfamiliar others has deep evolutionary roots. But this should not be used as an excuse for failing to look at the evidence – although too often, what is cited as evidence is closer to an anecdote representing extreme but not representative views.

Integration across the nation

One of the chapters of my book Why Immigration Policy is Hard: And how To make it better is about the impact of migration on community. Much of it is about differences between Muslims and non-Muslims. Ignoring this reality risks being accused of ignoring a problem. But singling out Muslims for particular attention also risks emphasising their difference, which is often not as large as many people think.

Take views on gay rights and gender equality. Research suggests that Muslims in Western Europe hold, on average, more conservative views on these matters than their non-Muslim neighbours. In data from the European Social Survey, 83% of non-Muslims in Western Europe think that gay men and women should be free to live as they wish: 54% of Muslims agree, while 29% actively disagree. Though more conservative, most Muslims have tolerant views on homosexuality.

On attitudes to gender equality, a similar pattern holds: 31% of Muslims think men should have greater claim to jobs when they are scarce compared with 15% of non-Muslims. Though more conservative, note that it is a minority of Muslims who agree with this view.

These differences in views are real but not as large as many people fear. And they are not static. Muslims born in Western Europe hold noticeably more liberal views on these questions than people in the countries that they left, where in some cases, homosexuality remains a criminal offence punishable by death.

Over time, views change. UK-born Bangladeshi and Pakistani women now outperform boys in national exams, marry later, have fewer children and are more likely to be in employment than earlier generations. Acculturation – the gradual convergence of values between migrants and the societies they join – is messy and incomplete, but it is real and it is powerful.

Other data tell a similar story. In 2007, people in England and Wales were asked to choose the most important values for living in Britain. The answers of Muslims and non-Muslims were similar: tolerance, politeness and respect for the law were mentioned in roughly similar proportions.

There were some differences. Muslims were more concerned with religious respect, and put a slightly lower emphasis on freedom of speech – probably because they feel Islam is often on the receiving end of criticism. But values billed as distinctively British values turn out on inspection to be fairly universal human values that most migrants already hold.

The danger of extremes

It is challenging to look at the data on average views and conclude that we face an existential cultural crisis. I think Jo Cox, a British MP murdered by a white nationalist in 2016, had it right when she said: ‘we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us’.

There are, of course, people with extremist views. In 2021, another MP, David Amess, was murdered by an Islamist radical. The Islamists and white nationalists have, to a striking degree, similar views. Both groups insist that Islam and Western liberalism are fundamentally and irreconcilably incompatible; and both treat conflict as inevitable, although they differ in their views on who should triumph.

Both groups also depend on the other for their recruitment. The white nationalist says that Muslims will never integrate: some will take this as confirmation that they are right to resist. The Islamist says that the West will never accept Muslims: the far right nationalist's rhetoric confirms it. These extremes are not opposed forces cancelling each other out. They are collaborating in the construction of exactly the division that they claim to be fighting.

This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy in its most dangerous form: the alarmism that creates the very conflict it fears. If the non-Muslim majority consistently treats Muslims as a suspect community, it will eventually produce a community with more reason to be suspicious of the majority. If we insist loudly enough that Islam and liberal democracy are incompatible, we may in time make that incompatibility real.

But complacency is not the answer to alarmism. There are extremists making a pitch for hearts and minds. In a speech in 2025, Keir Starmer warned that ‘we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together’. He was widely criticised for using the word ‘stranger’, as Powell had done over 50 years earlier.

I doubt that this was an intentional echo, and there was a fundamental difference in the point being made by Powell and Starmer: the former spoke using the past tense saying that we were already an island of strangers, while the latter was referring to a possible future, warning against complacency.

The way forward

What policies might foster greater cohesion? There is a recurring temptation to enforce outward conformity as a substitute for genuine cultural understanding: banning the burqa, requiring loyalty oaths, making visible difference illegal.

These policies are almost certainly counter-productive. One study of the 2004 French headscarf ban found that it reduced integration among Muslim girls by causing them to withdraw from society. You may be able to compel people to look as if they have conformed on the outside, but you cannot compel them to conform on the inside. Coercive assimilation risks reinforcing the Islamist narrative that Western liberalism is incompatible with Muslim identity.

Language, however, is genuinely important. Communities that cannot communicate with each other are more likely to be divided. It is right to insist that migrants can speak English to an appropriate standard. But the extent to which this is a problem now is sometimes exaggerated: in the 2021 census, fewer than one in 300 people in England and Wales were unable to speak English.

The discomfort that some people feel at hearing unfamiliar languages in public spaces is understandable, but it does not justify insisting that people communicate only in English when no English-speaker is present to need it. Being able to speak the language when it matters is what integration requires; what you speak among friends and family is your own business.

We need to find a path between alarmism and complacency. The pattern of exaggerated fear followed by gradual accommodation is one of the most consistent features of Western immigration history – with first Catholics, then Jews and now Muslims feared.

That does not mean that the process of assimilation is painless or automatic, or that we can afford to be complacent about the very real challenges involved. It does mean that those who insist that the current moment is categorically different – that this time the newcomers really will not integrate, that this time the conflict really is inevitable – are making a claim that has been made before and which has, before, been wrong.

Where can I find out more?

Why Immigration Policy is Hard: And how to make it better: Polity Press book by Alan Manning at the Centre for Economic Performance (CEP) at the London School of Economics.
What is Immigration Policy For?: Bristol University Press book by Madeleine Sumption at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
How to Be a Patriot: Why love of country can end our very British culture war: HarperCollins book by Sunder Katwala of British Future.
Make immigration boring again: Article by Alan Manning in CEP’s magazine CentrePiece.